Album Review

In 2004, the co(s)mically prolific Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO disbanded, apparently burned out from the stress of releasing an album every other week. Fans of the band had about two minutes to mourn before ringleader Makoto Kawabata announced a new Acid Mothers configuration: the Cosmic Inferno.

Featuring former members of venerable Japanese outfits such as the Boredoms, High Rise, and Ghost, the Cosmic Inferno has impeccable psychedelic speed-freak credentials. IAO Chant from the Cosmic Inferno, invariably the first of many (maybe too many) Cosmic Inferno releases, is a fifty-two-minute one-track tribute to the late Pierre Moerlen of Gong in which the band explores the peaks and valleys of a single riff.

This may sound boring to the uninitiated, but in the hands of Kawabata, the riff is God: omnipresent, shape-shifting and felt even when it is not heard. As the band builds up a propulsive outer-space Krautrock groove behind him, Kawabata launches headlong into the infinite until the sound of his guitar becomes a white-hot all-encompassing umbrella; the sum of the universe, the beginning and end of all creation, the sonic equivalent of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny getting into a fight during the Super Bowl halftime show.

The result is an overwhelming mess from an entity whose entire output has been an overwhelming mess, in both the sheer quantity of releases and the power of the sound contained within. Embrace the madness and dive into the glorious slop that is Acid Mothers Temple. What are you waiting for? It'll be weeks before they release another record.